Should I switch to cable?

[TP]

I have DSL and have been happy with it for a couple years now, until recently. I got switched to Telocity from Flashcom as my ISP. They have this lame gateway/router they forced upon me that seems to be crap.

Anyway, I had 416/416 speed, and now it seems to be less even though they claim its the same. One rep I spoke to said its because they use Frame Relays (that share the bandwidth from the CO), even though the IP is static...

I live in an urban area. I have relatives I visited recently that live in a more rural area. They have @Home cable, and the speeds just seemed to rock.. Like 1.5 and 2.0 mbps...It was sooo nice.

I am wondering if I should switch to cable. I pay $40 now for DSl, and thats how much cable would be. I just wonder how slow cable speeds could get down to, living in the city, and assuming I would be sharing the bandwidth. My relatives connection seemed to never slow down, meaning they had probably few people, if any, sharing with them.

I have looked into other DSL providers in my area but my options are slim, and we all know what a hassle this can all be....

 

[purplehayes]

I've had cable for a few months and have never noticed any speed drops during peak times. Then again I'm not sure how many of my neighbors have cable modems either.

I've got RoadRunner here in Atlanta and I've been super happy with it. My d/l's clock-in at 1.5 Mbps and greater sometimes.

I can't preach against DSL because I don't have any experience with it yet. I'll let you know around the end of the month when my office gets iDSL. (144Kbps---watch me rock now! NOT!) But it's better than a single channel ISDN modem we currently have.

GO Cable!

PH

 

[TP]

Well, I do network admin here at a private school and we have SDSL 384kbps and its fine... Its just that getting faster speeds for home use with DSL is expensive....The question is whether cable speeds will be consistent... I dont know if there is any way to really know without trying it... I wonder if the cable company will tell you how many people are on your local share...

 

[bigshooter]

I have had @home cable for almost 3 years now. I have never had a noticeable slowdown, except for some peak times, 6-8 pm where it seems that my ping in games like cs goes up, but it could be the server i'm connecting to, and not @home.

 

[kingofslack]

If you can get @home, do it. I've had friends that have had DSL for a long time taunt me when I couldn't get DSL in my area, but once Comcast got out here, I was the one laughing. I just went to 2wire.com and got a bandwidth test, I'm at 2145.5Mbps, and that's with several Napster dl's going. There aren't noticeable decreases as the day goes into peak hours either, but I don't know how many are on my node. The greatest thing about @home is that if you constantly under-perform, you can call them and they'll throttle you up. It takes a week or two of daily phone calls, but that's what they did for my friend who now downloads in the 3-4Mbps range.

 

[tjll11a]

I wish i could have cable. I only can have wet dreams about it being avaiable one day